
CIass___£4_i7L 
Bonk ' ^ 



.T5379 



i 



J.AA^A>^AA^A^A^A^AAA^AAAA^AAXAA.^A 



Death of PitKsii)h:NT Lincoln 



A SERMON, 



IPIR.E.^^OI^EXD I]Sr G-FLJ^G'El OUXJ-FIOET, 



OBANGE, N. J. 



FASTER. APRIL 10, 180r 



BY THE RECTOR. 



JAMES S. BUSH, M. A 



©range, N'. 3. : 

E. GARDNEK, POWEK-PRESS PRINTER. 
1865. 



T*»»»»Tf»»»»rTT>T»*TyTT»T*»»»»»»T*»f»»y>»*»»»*^»*»>»»»»>»»T'>»»^ 



Death of President Lincoln, 



A SERMON, 



DPI=l.E^^OI^EID IlSr C3-I=L.A^OE OI3:XJI=LOI3", 



ORANGE, K. J., 



EASTER, APRIL 16, 1865, 



BY THE RECTOR, 



JAMES S. BUSH, M. A. 



©range, N. Jf. : 

E. GARDNER, POWER-PRESS PRINTER, 
1865. 



A SEEMON 



' ' Ye men of Israel, hear these words : Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved 
of God among you, by miracles, and wonders, and signs, -which God did, by 
Him, in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know : Him being delivered 
by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and 
by wicked hands have crucified and slain : whom God hath raised up, hav- 
ing loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be 
holdenof it."— AcTsii. 22, 23, 24. 

Deatpi and the Resurrection! Mysterious opposites, 
brought together by the will of God ! The mourner's grief 
and the mourner's hope ! The symbols of the twain are in- 
tertwined to-day in the house of God. The union is not a 
strange one. Easter flowers for many ages have decked the 
graves of loved ones departed. Wo are pleased when they 
meet the eye, beside the forms that Death has claimed for his 
own. For they tell of a power mightier even than Death. 
But they cannot blind the eye to the present fact of death. 
And to-day, the remembrance of this is forced upon us, even 
in the midst of our rejoicings as the disciples of arisen Saviour. 
The pall of sorrow is thrown over Font and Altar, and litly so, 
for both tell us, first of death— of the death of Jesus — of the 
death of those mortal bodies — of the death of the body of 
sin. We are baptized into His death, and the truth thus 
beheld in symbol, is one that fills the heart with grief, that 
our sins should make His death the saddest fact in the world's 
history. The altar too, tells us first of the cross of Calvary, 
and of Him who by wicked hands was crucified and slain. 
To make the memorial of His death, and the confession of 
our sins that caused it, we kneel around it, often with tears, 
not only of sympathy, but with tears of contrition. 

Is this, then, the sum of our solemn sacramental service ? 
Is this the only meaning that we gather from these symbols 



of our faith in Christ? A sad religion, indeed, were ours, if 
tliis were all its teachings. A life that no mortal could bear, 
were ours, as the disciples only, of a crucified Saviour. For it 
were a life without hope, ay, and a life without God, in the 
world. But " blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy, hath 
begotten us unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead." Font and Altar tell together, an- 
other story than the death of sin, and the death of Jesus. "We 
are baptized, indeed, into Christ, even into His death, and 
with Him, the man of sin is buried in the waters of baptism. 
But through the grave and gate of death, it is the blessed por- 
tion of the believer to pass with Him, to a joyful resurrection. 
The sad memorial we make of His crucifixion, tells besides to 
the believing heart, of the sins that were nailed with Him to 
the cross ; and the Body and Blood of the dying victim, be- 
come, through faith, the very food and sustenance of our risen 
life,— the precious pledge that this life shall never die, but be 
renewed and glorified, by the mighty power of God. 

Fitly, then, above these signs of moiu-ning, the sym- 
bols of this risen life are seen to spring. Fitly, on the 
very ashes of the departed, moistened as' they are and 
must be, with our tears, do we rear the memorial of the 
Christian's hope. And to-day, as always, when stricken by 
the hand of God, do we send up to Him, from crushed and 
bleeding hearts, the Christian's prayer of faith. O my 
brother, mysteiy though it be, and impossible to him who is 
not sustained by the faith of the Gospel of Jesus, this com- 
mingling of tears of wo and tears of joy is, indeed, the truest 
as it may become the most blessed experience in the life of 
mortals. It is no contradiction to the truth that we see be- 
fore us. It is no contradiction to the facts of our mortal life. 
It is no contradiction to our nature, which God hath made 
so keenly alive to this our double portion of joy and sorrow. 
He who made us to weep, made us also to rejoice ; and it is 
the precious truth of His Word that the one shall become 
the means of a profounder and more abiding experience of 



the other. " Tliey that sow in tears shall reap in joy. And 
he that now goeth on his way weeping shall doubtless come 
again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him." 

This is why, beloved, we do not give up our Easter flowers 
to-day, but wreath them even around the garments of our 
mourning ; that thoughts not only of death and the grave 
may be ours, but thoughts beside of a blessed resurrection — 
that the remembrance may be ours, not alone of what 
wicked hands and hellish hate have done, but the grateful 
remembrance of what wicked hands and hellish hate have 
not done, and can never do through the mercy of God. "We 
mingle to-day as never before, the tokens of a nation's grief, 
with the expressions of the brightest hopes and the deepest 
joys, that we solemnize in our Christian year; and the glad- 
ness of our Easter anthem is chastened into notes of sorrow, 
such as we could feel to be fitting under scarce another dis- 
pensation of Providence. ]S'o private sorrow, no lesser grief, 
could have caused this seeming departure from the custom 
hallowed by so many ages and so many joyous associations. 
But in the midst of these marks of sorrow, we cling to the 
comforting signs of the Christian faith, with which God 
Himself through a risen Saviour hath been pleased to cheer 
us. It is the lesson of the resurrection that we teach to the 
mourner in the last sad office for the dead; and the parting 
word of inspiration ^following as it does the precious minis- 
trations of hope, is the glad assurance of victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

We will not surrender, then, a single thought nor a single 
sign which our Holy Festival doth ofter for the strengthening 
of our hope, and the confirmation of our faith. The very 
words of our anthem exhort us to the cherishing of all that is 
so given us, and all that we so much need in this va'e of tears. 
" Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore^ let us 
keep the feast." The world needed that greatest sacrifice, and 
the world should mourn for the sins which caused it. But 
the world rejoices in the unspeakable blessings of life and im- 
mortality which that sacrifice ushered in. And I believe 



that, deeply as the nation and the civilized world will deplore 
the sacrifice of that good man whom God had placed over 
ns, it will yet be found that the offering up of this life— 
the most valuable, and at the present time, as it seemed, the 
most needful to our future — will be blessed to the nation's 
weal, through a deeper abhorrence of the sins which com- 
passed his death, a profounder reverence for the authority of 
those whom God hath placed over us, by a truer respect for 
the virtues of goodness and gentleness, allied with courage and 
firmness, and all blended together in the purest patriotism, 
which so eminently distinguished our lamented President. 
Be assured, my brethren, as that great and good man did not 
livQ in vain, so he has not died in vain. Death is cruel, and 
we stand aghast in the presence of its mighty power. But 
there is something stronger than death. The life of God is 
stronger — His truth and His righteousness are stronger. And 
these, as illustrated in the deeds of the departed, will not be 
buried with his mortal body. 

We sorrow not, therefore, over his fall, as those that have 
no hope. We have hope in his death — hope for the memory 
that will be precious in the hearts of his countrymen, en- 
shrined there in holy fellowship with that other name revered 
from the nation's birth — the Father of his country. We have 
hope for the future of our beloved land — that the carnival of 
blood and murder is drawing near its end. Instead of finding 
in the event that saddens us, the material for our fears, and 
distrusting the Providence that has stricken us in the midst 
of our rejoicings, I read even in this our chastisement, the 
revelation of the righteous will of God, for a. surer foundation 
still of the strength and glory of the Kepublic. Treason has 
done its work, and treason has rung in the nation's capital its 
own death-knell. Come what may, no good man through- 
out the world can now disguise from himself the malig- 
nity and hellish atrocity of this rebellion. Murderers may 
still band themselves together for a time, but their 
work of malice is now done, and the work of repent- 
ance is begun, even in those who have stood by in times 



1 

past irresolute and indiflfereiit to the issue. Though not, 
perhaps, as we would bring it, yet in the better way that 
God shall appoint, peace to our bleeding country will come — 
a peace in which all true hearts will rejoice, and unite here- 
after in maintaining forever. The fellowship of grief will 
bring together brothers who have been sundered by the petty 
strifes of partisan contention. And they who have sub- 
mitted their cause to the wager of battle in the honest belief 
that the right was theirs, will now abide the issue which God 
hath so manifestly determined. 

Let us not forget, brethren, that the destinies of our land 
are in the hands of a God who does not hate, but loves us, 
and desires only in all the troubles that He brings upon us, 
to draw us to a truer allegiance to Himself as a righteous 
and a loving Sovereign. The manifestations of His will that 
our chastening is not for our destruction, but our regenera- 
tion, are unmistakable. The baptism of blood, so much more 
awful than we had thought possible, will be followed by a 
resurrection, not to the glory of a life that is only one of 
material prosperity, and, therefore, of itself a career of cor- 
ruption and decay, but that other glory which comes to the 
nation as to the individual by the power of faith in God, as 
a God of Justice, of Mercy and of Truth. We have learned 
much by our sorrows. The nation's discipline will purify its 
own peculiar life, and will be felt, too, with cleansing efficacy 
by the Church of Christ. 

It was by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of 
God, that Jesus of ISTazareth was taken from this earthly 
life of goodness, and by wicked hands was crucified and slain. 
It was part of the wisdom of God in a mystery, that the 
death of Jesus should be allowed. God knew the resurrec- 
tion that would follow, and the mighty power of that resurrec- 
tion in extending the gospel of Christ throughout the world. 
Everywhere, when the story of His death was told, and the 
power of this new life made manifest by the Apostles' preach- 
ing, men were pricked in the heart and turned by thousands 
to the truths of the gospel, and the knowledge of salvation 



through the blood of Jesus, I read in this fact, the meaning 
of the event we deplore, and I ground upon it the firmest 
hopes for the salvation of our country, through the same 
trutlis of the gospel of Christ. 

Tlie President was an instrument in the hands of God. 
Faithfully and wisely, he discharged the duties of his office. 
Malice will hide its head in shame, and the voice of Detrac- 
tion will be struck dumb in the grateful remembrance of his 
virtues. But his earthly career, though cut short by the hand 
of violence, was continued as long, as in the course of God's 
wisdom it was required. The death of Jesus was needed, 
to close His career of holiness : so we have reason to be- 
lieve for similar ends, was the death of President Lincoln de- 
creed. We call it untimel}^ But our times are in God's 
hands. He is the disposer of life and death, and all the 
events of earth. In His hands, let us be content to trust our- 
selves, our lives and our eternal destinies, the life and the 
destiny of the nation, with all the aifairs of earth and time, 
believing in Him, giving thanks unto Him, and hoping in 
Him for the life that now is, and that which is to come. 



